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What are XML errors, and what are fatal errors?

 Nobody wants to encounter errors in their work, but it’s going to happen eventually.  Perhaps you forgot to close a tag, or misspelled a word… regardless, there’s an error somewhere in the document.

Errors come in two basic types… your general errors, and your fatal errors.  Don’t let the word “fatal” get you upset; as a general rule, the word “fatal” in the computer world translates into “mildly uncomfortable” in the real world.  It’s not a good thing to have a fatal error, but at least it can be corrected.

General errors occur because there’s something out of place and the processing program doesn’t like it.  Often a message will pop up on the screen to let you know that there are errors on the page (and you usually have a chance to view them), and the page will display as normal (though some of the formatting may be incorrect due to the error.)  If you encounter an error, don’t panic… simply check (if you can) to see where the error occurs, and go into the code to try to fix it.  If the error came from an external file and became a true error once it hit the XML code, this might take a little bit of work… tracing errors back to their origin can sometimes be quite taxing.  Luckily, you can use the document that was displayed when the error was reported as a guide to tell whether or not the error is in the formatting or somewhere else.

A fatal error, on the other hand, means that something happened that can’t be easily handled by the processor.  The attempt to use the document has been terminated (hence, the term “fatal”) and you need to fix it before the data in the document can be used.

This is where it gets tricky… fatal errors are often much harder to trace back to their source, though they’re usually caused by an easily-repairable mistake.  You have no messed-up document to work from, though you may have a line number or a code snippet that was displayed with your error message.  The best thing that you can do with a fatal error is to try to fix it a little at a time… go into the code to the approximate area where the error occurred, fix what you think caused it, and attempt to reload the page.  If it loads, then you’ve most likely fixed the problem… if it doesn’t, move on to the next possible problem and repeat the process.  Sometimes it’s a problem that requires you to completely recode a portion of your document (or perhaps all of it!), but most errors can be easily repaired once you locate them.

It’s the finding them that can be the tricky part.